YouTube Channel Lookalike Finder

YouTube Channel Lookalike Finder discovers and ranks channels similar to seed creators, exporting shared topics, audience similarity, subscriber and video counts, rank, discovery query, and seed provenance for every recommendation.

Use it to expand sponsorship prospect lists, map competitors, discover creators in the same niche, or give an AI agent a structured set of adjacent channels instead of a loose keyword-search page.

Quick start

1. Add one or more channel URLs, @handles, or UC channel IDs to seedChannels.
2. Set the desired number of matches and optional subscriber range.
3. Run the Actor and export ranked lookalikes to CSV, JSON, Excel, XML, or your API workflow.

Example output

{
  "seedChannelName": "OpenAI",
  "rank": 1,
  "similarityScore": 86,
  "channelName": "Example AI Channel",
  "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCexample",
  "sharedTopics": ["artificial intelligence", "developer tools"],
  "subscriberCount": 245000,
  "videoCount": 318,
  "audienceSimilarity": "similar",
  "discoveryQuery": "OpenAI artificial intelligence developer tools",
  "collectedAt": "2026-08-11T20:00:00.000Z"
}

What data you get

Each row includes the seed channel name and URL, recommendation rank, similarity score, candidate channel name, URL and ID, description, handle, thumbnail, subscriber and video counts when visible, shared topics, an audience-size comparison, discovery query, and collection time. The seed provenance lets you keep separate rankings when the same channel is relevant to several seeds.

Input settings

Setting	JSON key	Description
Seed YouTube channels	seedChannels	Add 1–10 channel URLs, @handles, or UC channel IDs.
Maximum matches per seed	maxMatchesPerSeed	Save up to this many ranked lookalike channels for each seed.
Country	country	Two-letter country code used to localize YouTube search, such as US, GB, or PT.
Language	language	YouTube interface/search language such as en, pt, or en-GB.
Minimum subscribers	minSubscribers	Exclude visible channels below this subscriber count. Channels without a visible count are treated as zero.
Maximum subscribers	maxSubscribers	Optional upper subscriber limit. Leave empty for no maximum.
Run time limit in seconds	runTimeSecs	Stop admitting new searches before this shared deadline. Use 30–270 seconds.
Proxy configuration	proxyConfiguration	Optional Apify proxy settings for advanced users.

Output fields

Field	JSON key	Description
Seed channel	seedChannelUrl	Seed YouTube channel URL.
Seed channel ID	seedChannelId	Public UC channel ID when available.
Seed name	seedChannelName	Visible seed channel name.
Rank	rank	Similarity rank within the seed channel.
Similarity score	similarityScore	Explainable 0–100 score based on shared public topics and audience size.
Shared topics	sharedTopics	Normalized topic terms shared with the seed.
Discovery query	discoveryQuery	Seed-derived YouTube query that discovered the channel.
Channel ID	channelId	Public YouTube channel ID when available.
Channel name	channelName	Visible lookalike channel name.
Channel URL	channelUrl	Public YouTube channel URL.
Description	description	Search-visible channel description snippet.
Subscribers	subscriberCount	Parsed visible subscriber count.
Subscribers text	subscriberCountText	Original localized subscriber count text.
Videos	videoCount	Parsed visible video count.
Videos text	videoCountText	Original localized video count text.
Thumbnail	thumbnailUrl	Channel thumbnail URL.
Audience similarity	audienceSimilarity	0–100 subscriber-scale similarity when both counts are visible.
Collected at	collectedAt	UTC collection timestamp.

Input recipes

Find twenty adjacent channels:

{"seedChannels":["https://www.youtube.com/@OpenAI"],"maxMatchesPerSeed":20,"country":"US","language":"en"}

Find mid-sized sponsorship candidates:

{"seedChannels":["@OpenAI"],"maxMatchesPerSeed":30,"minSubscribers":10000,"maxSubscribers":500000}

Who is it for?

• Sponsorship teams expanding from creators that already perform well.
• Influencer agencies building niche-specific YouTube prospect lists.
• Competitive intelligence teams mapping neighboring channels.
• Media buyers comparing reachable audience bands.
• Developers and AI agents creating repeatable creator-discovery workflows.

Pricing

Pricing is pay per event: one small start charge for the run and one tiered result charge for each ranked lookalike channel saved. The exported rank, shared topics, similarity score, and seed provenance are included in that result. See the live YouTube Channel Lookalike Finder Pricing tab for exact rates.

Tips and limits

• A run accepts a maximum of ten seeds and saves up to fifty matches per seed.
• Similarity is an explainable discovery score based on public topics, text, and visible audience information; it is not YouTube's private recommendation score.
• Subscriber or video counts may be nullable when a channel hides them or YouTube does not expose them in the result.
• Public channels and search availability can change. Keep seed and discovery-query fields when reviewing results.
• Narrow subscriber filters can legitimately produce fewer than the requested maximum.

API usage

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/fetch_cat~youtube-channel-lookalike-finder/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"seedChannels":["@OpenAI"],"maxMatchesPerSeed":10}'

JavaScript:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('fetch_cat/youtube-channel-lookalike-finder').call({
  seedChannels: ['@OpenAI'], maxMatchesPerSeed: 10,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

Python:

import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(os.environ['APIFY_TOKEN'])
run = client.actor('fetch_cat/youtube-channel-lookalike-finder').call(run_input={
    'seedChannels': ['@OpenAI'], 'maxMatchesPerSeed': 10,
})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items

Use with MCP and AI agents

Connect the official Apify MCP server at https://mcp.apify.com?tools=fetch_cat/youtube-channel-lookalike-finder or configure:

{"mcpServers":{"apify":{"url":"https://mcp.apify.com?tools=fetch_cat/youtube-channel-lookalike-finder"}}}

Try: “Find 20 YouTube channels similar to OpenAI, then rank only channels with 10,000–500,000 subscribers,” or “Compare the shared topics across lookalikes for these three seed channels.”

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key?

No API-key input is required for the public channel discovery workflow.

Why did I receive fewer matches?

The seed may be unavailable, filters may exclude candidates, duplicate channels may be removed, or the shared run-time limit may be reached. Review the run summary.

Can one candidate appear for several seeds?

Yes. Each row retains its seed and rank because relevance can differ by seed.

Can I use channel IDs instead of URLs?

Yes. Full channel URLs, @handles, and UC channel IDs are accepted.

Related actors

• YouTube Search Results Scraper
• YouTube Channel Details Scraper
• YouTube Channel Videos Scraper
• YouTube Video Details Scraper
• YouTube Comments Scraper

Support

Open an issue from the Actor page and provide the run ID or run URL, input JSON, expected output, actual output, and one reproducible public seed-channel URL. That evidence lets us distinguish filtering, availability, and extraction problems quickly.